Kansas State vs Baylor Basketball Recap

Jacob Pullen missed a tying layup attempt in a game his team lost last Saturday. The young man sure made up for that mistake the next time he took the court.

Yes, Pullen - a 6-foot, 200-pound junior from Maywood, Ill. - hit two free throws with 8.2 seconds left in regulation to give Kansas State a two-point lead over Baylor, but there were so many other ways in which this brilliant backcourt bomber carried the Wildcats to a highly significant bounce-back breakthrough. Pullen's ice-veins free throws were hardly the only reasons that coach Frank Martin's club triumphed at the Ferrell Center in Waco, Tex., a place where the Bears had won 11 consecutive home games.

When Pullen missed a layup with less than 10 seconds left in this past Saturday's 73-69 KSU loss to Oklahoma State, the engine of the Wildcats' offense had reason to feel discouraged. The realm of collegiate athletics is a world of pronounced emotional volatility. The wacky results and unexpected champions that emerge in college basketball are the product not only of the one-and-done nature of postseason tournaments, but the even more salient reality of the construction of the human organism. A 20-year-old male is still a person who is learning how to handle his mind, his emotions, and the tumult of the actions and events that swirl around him.

Whereas more seasoned professional athletes - particularly those in their 30s - have learned how to master their mind and clinically prepare for the business of winning, college athletes are simply and undeniably more vulnerable to mood swings and crises of confidence. When Pullen missed the easy shot that should have taken Oklahoma State into overtime on Jan. 23, the Kansas State camp had reason to be concerned about Pullen's poise and consistency. The junior guard, had he allowed his level of play to decline, wouldn't have been the last lauded college athlete to slide in the wake of a stomach-punch moment on the court.

With all this as prelude, it's a huge moment for KSU to not only grab a road win on the heels of the Oklahoma State loss, but to do the deed with Jacob "Pullen" his weight for the resurgent Cats.

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Pullen - in addition to his free throw heroics in the final seconds - did so much for for the KSU cause. He hit 7 of 11 shots and went 6 of 7 from 3-point range. The Illinois native also went 5 of 5 from the foul line en route to a game-high 25 points. Those numbers are all gaudy, and they tell a fuller story of this star's stellar outing, but there was one other aspect of Pullen's prowess which has to receive some ink: his defense.

LaceDarius Dunn, a dynamic guard and the meal-ticket scorer on coach Scott Drew's Baylor roster, lit up Kansas for 27 points a week ago. Dunn is a natural scorer with a variegated game and first-rate instincts on the court. Whoever drew him was going to have a tough night at the office, but after 40 minutes, Jacob Pullen made Dunn look quite ordinary.

It often happens that great shooters slack off on defense and try to separate one end of the court from another, but Pullen proved to be a two-way factor in this tussle. He hounded Dunn into a nine-point outing on 3-of-13 shooting. Even more instructively, he helped defend Dunn on the game's final sequence, when the Baylor guard threw up a wild shot which missed just before the horn. It was rare indeed to see Jacob Pullen miss a key layup against Oklahoma State a few days ago, but it was just as surprising to see Pullen have such a wide-ranging impact on a redemptive game for the newly invigorated Wildcats.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Staff Writer